Council starts hunt for deputy auditor

Now that the search for a new Worcester city auditor has come to a screeching halt, with City Auditor James A. DelSignore having agreed to postpone his retirement for another year at the urging of several councilors, the focus will be on filling the vacant deputy city auditor’s position.

The City Council has asked that the deputy auditor’s job be advertised within 90 days and City Manager Michael V. O’Brien recommend the funding.

The position, which has been vacant for two years since Thomas J. Clawson took early retirement in 2010, has a weekly salary range of $1,348 to $2,033, according to the city’s salary ordinance.

While the city auditor is hired by the City Council, the city manager is actually responsible for filling the deputy auditor’s position and other subordinate positions in the Auditing Department, City Solicitor David M. Moore told the council’s Municipal Operations Committee Tuesday night.

But in a case like this, Mr. Moore said, the manager will delegate the hiring of the deputy auditor to Mr. DelSignore, as he has often done with other department heads.

There could be another rub with this hiring.

While the council can have a residency requirement for the auditor, since that person is technically its employee, it apparently cannot have a similar requirement for the deputy auditor, much to the dismay of several city councilors.

Mr. Moore said the advertisement for the position can only request that the person eventually hired as deputy city auditor become a Worcester resident within one year of the day of his/her employment.

“We can only make it discretionary, not mandatory,” Councilor-at-Large Konstantina B. Lukes said of the residency issue.

The council does have a residency requirement for the auditor’s job — that person must either be a Worcester resident or agree to move into the city within one year of their date of hiring.

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With the city looking for companies to set up shop in the South Worcester Industrial Park, Mayor Joseph M. Petty hopes it might benefit from spinoff from the expansion of CSX’s freight yard between Shrewsbury and Franklin streets.

When that project was pitched to city officials a couple of years ago, they were told that having Worcester as CSX’s new freight hub for New England would draw companies to the city looking to establish major distribution centers.

Mr. Petty said the South Worcester Industrial Park might be an ideal spot for some of those distribution centers.

But Paul Morano Jr., the city’s business assistance director, said the parcels in the South Worcester park may be too small for distribution centers. He said the city has had discussions with the Providence & Worcester Railroad, which has a rail line that abuts the park and an inactive spur in the site that could be reactivated.

“We are more likely to have spinoff with the P&W,” Mr. Morano told the City Council Tuesday night. “The end use for (South Worcester) is the creation of a lot of jobs. We are not looking for a company to come in with a warehouse with a few employees or put up a small building and not maximize use of the land.”

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Robert L. Moylan Jr., commissioner of public works and parks, and 10 employees from his department were recognized at the start of Tuesday night’s City Council meeting for the yeoman efforts in responding to the Nov. 11 water main break on Chandler Street and getting the citywide water distribution system back on line the next morning.

City Manager Michael V. O’Brien said the city is blessed to have such a team of employees. He said the historic water main break led to a series of decisions and actions that were made seamlessly from the moment the main broke to when the water system was brought back on line the next day.

Mayor Joseph M. Petty introduced each of the employees, who received a standing ovation from the city councilors and those in the council chamber.

“I got more compliments from more people in the city of Worcester about the great work that you did,” said Mr. Petty, who added that those employees being recognized represented more than 30 employees who were actually involved in all facets of the operation. “This is something that could have been a lot worse.”